Welcome to Windows 7 Forums. Our forum is dedicated to helping you find support and solutions for any problems regarding your Windows 7 PC be it Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or a custom build. We also provide an extensive Windows 7 tutorial section that covers a wide range of tips and tricks.

Windows 7: Virus on Hard Drive : \$Recycle.Bin

I have a Westend Passport 1TB Hard drive which i gave it to a friend to share some stuff. When I tried to open it i could only see 1 single folder in the hard drive and it with this name $Recycle.Bin. When i try to scan it all the folders and data's are seen in the scanning scree, but there are no data that u can use.

I use a paid version of Kaspersky Internet security and so was a bit careless assuming that it could prevent all the malwares abd viruses.

I also use Western Digital External USB HDDs including one Passport and they have that $Recycle.Bin Folder, the Folder is created by Windows as part of its deletion process. I see the same Folder on my second Internal HDD. If the suggested diagnostic shows the drive clean then I'd consider the data lost. During the sharing it's possible the data was Moved rather than Copied.

@Berton, you are absolutely right when you say that $Recycle.Bin is a Windows System file. Yes, it is. The virus hides inside the recycle bin and hence it is called $Recycle.Bin virus.( Recycle bin by itself is not a virus.)

The OP says when scanning - by which I presume he means a anti-virus scan - he can see all the folders being scanned. So I would believe his folders may all be there.

Once there is a doubt, it is better to do a malwarebyte scan and get that cleared, as you have mentioned.

I have seen your earlier replies and did the same procedure to get the files. Well, i got all my files and i am able to preview it. What i dont understand is, how can it be a virus if i am using a paid version of Antivirus? I will also try to do the malwarebyte scan, which is the best antivirus you would like to suggest in the future?

I have seen your earlier replies and did the same procedure to get the files. Well, i got all my files and i am able to preview it. What i dont understand is, how can it be a virus if i am using a paid version of Antivirus? I will also try to do the malwarebyte scan, which is the best antivirus you would like to suggest in the future?

Do you mean that you used WinRAR to see the hidden files and copy those? Yep that is one way to recover the files when some virus hides them.

I did not mention this in my first post here for the need of the hour is to eliminate the virus first.

Once eliminated the folders and files most probably would have been unhidden automatically or we can unhide them with unhide commands.

These type of virus hide themselves in System Folders to avoid detection by anti-virus programs which normally don't touch system folders. They may also disable anti-virus programs to avoid detection.

Virus on Hard Drive : \$Recycle.Bin

Seagate external hard drive recycle binI have a Seagate ext. HD with 27GB of personal files and 2 GB of system files; 29 GB in all. Yet when I check the properties of the recycle bin it shows that there are (in the recycle bin) 84GB/31,072 files. I do Empty Recycle Bin and when I check properties again it shows the same 84GB/31,072...

Hardware & Devices

Recycle bin not showing deleted files for an external hard driveHello!
I work on a laptop and a desktop. I use an external 320 GB hard disk to save my files.
The laptop is running windows 7 home basic 64 bit (more than 2 years old) and The desktop is running windows 7 ultimate 64 bit (recently installed with formatting new pc).
The problem is..
...

General Discussion

$RECYCLE.BIN Virus in External Hard DriveHello,
In mid December I purchased a custom built PC and up until now it has been running perfectly.
But recently I scanned my entire computer (and connected devices) with AVG and found that inside of my external hard drive I have a virus.
This virus is located in the hidden $RECYCLE.BIN...

System Security

VIRUS has formatted hard drivei had a bad virus attack on 19/11/2011 and it formatted my hard drive but for some strange reason took all of my files but left notepad files ive used a program to find some system restore files and there from before the 19/11/2011 and there on my usb drive and don't know what to do with them in...

System Security

Virus on external hard driveHey people.
Last night my girlfriend plugged an external/portable hard drive into her Mac OSX and message came up saying there is a virus on the HD. So she unplugged the drive in fear of being infected and shut down the Mac before I could have a look what was said in the message.
So I ran a...

System Security

$recycle.bin folder on external hard driveHi all,
I was using Ace Utilities to scan an external hard drive and I noticed that 35.5GB was taken up in a folder called $recycle.bin. Can I empty the contents of this folder and all will be ok?
Thanks
edit to add....theres also a folder called RECYCLER which contains 3.3GB...can this...